Stashbusting Sewalong 2017: January theme - Sewing Organisation

I know I'm a bit behind in blogging my 2016 makes. OK, make that a LOT behind, but 2017 is a new year, and to kick off January, I am hosting the Stashbusting Sewalong, with the theme of "Sewing Organisation." I'm determined to get myself organised for this year, and I hope that some of the links I have later in this post can help you to get organised too. If you want to find out more about the Stashbusting Sewalong, be sure to join our Facebook Group where all the action happens.

With the end of year craziness that inevitably happens each and every year, it's great to take some time out at the start of a new year, and think about your sewing plans. I like to give my sewing studio a bit of a clean up, and take stock of what I would like to sew in the coming year. Having gotten myself a non sewing related job near the end of last year, my sewing time evaporated overnight. This has made it even more important to get organised to make time to fit any sewing in at all, but more about that later in the post.

Dyeing Lingerie components

Are you sewing along with the theme this month for the Stashbusting Sewalong? It's all about lingerie this month. If you want to see what others are sewing, you can join our Facebook Group.

Lingerie: Top 10 things to avoid in bra making

When I came to the anniversary of my first blog post on the making of bras, I started to write a really long winded post about some of the failures and successes of my bra making journey so far. It was so boring though, that I couldn't even bring myself to finish writing it, so I figured no one would want to read it either. I've taken some of the things I wanted to say, and come up with a list of common sense things to avoid when bra making. Learn from my mistakes, so you avoid making them.

Stashbusting Sewalong: August theme "Face your fears" - Swimsuit

Guess what? I'm a bit chuffed, because for the first time ever, I made a swimsuit! This month's stashbusting theme is all about facing what we fear in sewing. I had originally thought of cutting into some special fabric that I've been putting off using, but after some discussions on the Stashbusting group's Facebook page, I came up with something far more appropriate, and an actual real fear of mine: Lycra.

Hemming Tutorial - The wonders of Ban-Rol

I first came across ban-rol a few weeks ago, when a member of the Stashbusting Facebook group was asking for opinions on hemming a shirt, and someone else posted a tutorial to sewing baby hems with ban-rol. Not that I had a need for it, but I started searching for some straight away. Local sewing shops had never even heard of it, so I switched to searching online. Even there I wasn't having any luck.

I was trying again one day to find an Australian supplier, and came across another tutorial for using ban-rol, when I happened upon a comment from an Australian saying that she was getting some in for her shop. That person was Helene from Stitch 56 in Melbourne, a company that I had not previously heard of, nor had it come up in any of my searches for ban-rol. Less than a week later, I had my ban-rol, and a client who needed 50 silk scarves hemmed! I bought 5 metres of the widest ban-rol available, 2 inches. In hindsight, I should have bought more. I mean, the postage cost me as much as the ban-rol did, and if I need more, I'll be up for even more postage!

Organising my bra patterns

I recently completed a long overdue job of cleaning up and sorting out my bra patterns. Up until this, they had been living in a rather attractive cardboard box, inside a larger box of bra supplies. Now that I've made 13 bras, the pattern pieces are all starting to get a bit confusing. For my first few bras, I labelled the patterns V1, V2 etc. When I changed the wire size, I wrote the size as well, and then when I was still getting confused as to which was which, I came up with style numbers. But they were still all going in the box.

Bra Patterns in the box

Tips for Shirring with sucess

Take one enormous reel of shirring elastic,

one piece of fabric,

and a couple of hours later, you have - A dress